The Devo In-House Relay

Put simply, the Devo In-House Relay is a software application that listens on its ports to receive inbound events, apply processing rules to the events, then forward them over a secure channel using SSL/TLS encryption to the Devo Cloud. We strongly recommend that you set up and use a Devo Relay, especially when it's not possible to send events directly from the source system to the Devo Cloud securely and with its associated tag.

In addition to tagging events based on configurable rules and providing a secure channel to the Devo Cloud, the relay also:

Offers the ability to compress the data to minimize bandwidth requirements for sending.

Uses rules to apply filters in order to weed out the events you don't need to save in your Devo Cloud.

Temporarily stores the events in buffer in case there's an outbound connection error, so that it can resend the events when the connection is restored.

Is it necessary to use a Devo Relay?

No, it's not always necessary to use the relay. If an event source has internet connectivity, can correctly tag its events, and send them over a secure channel to the Devo Cloud, you can send them directly. For example, you can monitor system logs files on Unix-like servers, then send them properly tagged and over a secure channel to the Devo Cloud by using the rsyslog or syslog-ng protocols.

However, even when an event source can send events correctly to the Devo Cloud, the In-house Relay provides some additional benefits:

Optimized cloud storage - You can configure the relay to filter out unecessary events before forwarding to the Devo Cloud.